Monty Python Scripts

Erizabeth L / Fraud Film Squad

The cast:

The sketch:

(Exterior of an Elizabethan palace. Elizabethan music. An
Elizabethan messenger on a moped, comes up the drive and drives in
through the front door.)

SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'ERIZABETH L'

(Cut to a long corridor. The messenger appears mopeding along
the corridor very fast. He leaps off the moped and hands it to a
guard at a door. The guard places the moped on a rack and the
messenger enters the door going past three trumpeters who play a
fanfare. He approaches a clerical figure, who stands at yet another
door.)

SUPERIMPOSED CAPTIONS: 'EPISODE THREE' and 'THE ALMALDA'

Messenger: I bling a dispatch flom Prymouth.

Clerk: Flom Prymouth?

Messenger: Flow Sil Flancis Dlake.

Clerk: Entel and apploach the thlone.

(The doors open. The messenger leaps on another moped and
rides up to the throne on which sits Elizabeth surrounded by her
courtiers, all of who are on motorized bicycles.)

( The door opens. lnspector Leopard rum through the door
followed by a copper.)

Inspector: Not so fast, Yakomoto. (trumpeters play a
fanfare) Shut up! (fanfare stops) Allow me to introduce
myself. I am Inspector Leopard of Scotland Yard, Special Fraud Film
Director Squad.

Court: Leopard of the Yard!

Inspector: The same. Only more violent. (he
demonstrates this by kneeing tht copper in the balls) Right,
Slit Eyes Yakomoto, I'm arresting you for the impersonation of
Signor Luchino Visconti, famous Italian director of such movie
classics as 'Ossessione' (1942), 'La Tetra Trema' (I948), and 'Bellissima'
(I95I) - a satisfying ironic slice-of-life drama. I957 brought to
the silver screen his 'I Bianche Notre' adapted by Dostoyevsky, a
mannered and romantic melancholy of snow and mist and moonlit
encounters on canal bridges. 'Boccaccio 70' followed five years
later and the following year saw 'The Leopard'! So impressed was I
with this motion picture treatment of the Risorgimento that I went
along to Somerset House and changed me own name to Leopard,
preferring it to me original handle, 'Panther' (Aargh). 1 digress.
1969 saw 'The Damned', a GöStterdämmerung epic of political and
industrial shennanigans in good old Nazi Germany, starring Helmut
Berger as a stinking transvestite what should have his face sawn
off, the curvaceous Charlotte Rampling as a bit of tail, and the
impeccable Dirk Bogarde as Von Essen. The association of the latter
with Signor Visconti fructified with Dirk's magnificent portrayal of
the elderly pour what expires in Venice. And so, Yakomoto... blimey,
he gone! Never mind. I'll have you instead. (grabs the queen)

Queen: What?

Inspector: I haven't got time to go chasing after him,
there's violence to be done.